Hey, I didn’t say it was good.

I guess what I find so fascinating about it is: When did MTV ever condone being unpopular? Between the Spring Break programming and drunk girls crying on The Real World, it was an odd change of pace, but one that reminded me of the attitude MTV used to have, in the ’80s, before they became shameless culture-mongers. Still, it’s important not to ignore that this guy actually is attractive, and dressed fashionably, and — at least at my school — probably would have been popular. I guess it would have turned too many viewers off to have presented him as acne-ridden, overweight, without any sense of style, and listening to black metal?

Something I forgot to mention last time is that this was part of a series of commercials, if I remember correctly, that played on the “V” in “MTV,” although I forget the titles of the other installments.

Thanks to La fille des montagnes (”The girl mountain”?) for sending me the video.

Do you remember that?, where the kid is walking past the lockers in high school, and he has those big can headphones on, and all the jocks or whatever are sneering at him, and he just smiles contentedly and turns up his music?

I think it may have been an MTV2 campaign specifically. Anyway. I remember that.

Holy crap I can’t sleep.

Mark Ryden

WFMU DJ re-packages Britney Spears CD as obscure German electronica; it gets an enthusiastic response.

What.cd begins developing from the ground up a new torrent tracker source meant to replace the long-defunct, poorly-documented TBSource: Project Gazelle.

Loads of rare Andy Kaufman clips

The Arecibo Message
The Arecibo Reply

mcbess

Yvonne Fehling und Jennie Peiz

Nevertheless, Slashdot, Ain’t It Cool News, and doubtless thousands of other blogs are blowing up about it, and nobody’s asking any questions. Just fawning, ejaculatory cheerings-on.

The first thing you notice is how POORLY the page is designed. You even see a <meta name=”author” content=”John Stotler” /> in the source, that the domain is hosted at GoDaddy, and is registered through a privacy proxy. Okay, fine, so these people have hired an amateur designer. It’s possible.

But the announcement just resembles too closely every MST3K fan’s wet dream. They’re an easy target for a prank like this. They’ve been chanting Joel’s name continually for over ten years now, begging for him to come back. Pulling one over on people demonstrating such obnoxious behavior would be funny. What if it even made it on Slashdot? Or Wikipedia???

Besides the fact that it would be weird for all five of these people to be simultaneously inspired to beat that dead horse, Joel left the show because he wanted to distance himself from it. In a press release from 1993 he said,

It’s time for me to hang up my red jump suit and move behind the camera. Besides, there’s an old show business adage I once heard Adam West say: “Stay in the same costume and before you know it, you end up signing pictures at an R.V. show.” Maybe it was Clayton Moore, now that I think of it.

I want to become a behind-the-camera guy. I want to get on to the NEXT weird show. I want to be an idea man.

The new site itself is ugly, yes, but more than that, it’s very un-Joel-like through and through. Joel’s a smart, creative, funny guy. Would he really put his name behind such a stale, meaningless name as “Cinematic Titanic”? With this logo?:

Would he really say, “Our first release is at this time a total secret, however – I’m willing to say it makes ‘Manos the Hands of Fate’ look like ‘Santa Claus Conquers the Martians’ in a car wreck with ‘Eegah!’”? These are the words of a fan, naming his favorite episodes, not the words of a guy who wanted to move on with his life, fourteen years ago.

The site also reads, “I’ve just been interviewed by Lucasfilm online, in anticipation of Cinematic Titanic’s first live show and world premiere in San Francisco in December.” Lucasfilm online? Why haven’t they been talking about this? Wouldn’t an exclusive, rare interview with Joel Hodgson about his new project be something you might want to mention? Where in San Francisco is this premier? Why haven’t I gotten a confirmation email for signing up for the mailing list?

These things are all The Colbert Report is good for.

Miraculously retrieved from the land of forgotten television moments, four months after my plea on a Conan forum, to replace the taped copy I lost years ago. Because I like to hoard things and save them forever (ahem), I’m always disappointed when the internet fails to be effective in dredging up even the most insignificant cultural minutiae from the past. I’m getting used to it, but in the meantime, this was a warmly reassuring moment in my life.

Here’s Slate on the subject:

First, I grew excited at this promise, then began to wonder why no theologian, philosopher, or sitcom star in recorded history had done it before—Thomas Aquinas, Immanuel Kant, Tina Yothers, whoever—and realized I was in for a letdown. Comfort’s cadences were not even those of a preacher but of an infomercial host, and the God Squad had but three arguments on behalf of the big guy: All things have makers; the human conscience is evidence of a higher moral power; if you read the Gospel, then Christ will be revealed to you. For reasons too stupid to type, this was not an airtight case, and the atheists made quick work of it in tones of juvenile sarcasm.

They also threw in the first mover argument, which technically differs from the watchmaker argument. The content of the debate is of almost no interest, of course, as it closely parallels countless conversations that have taken place before it. But its being presented by ABC is significant, even unprecedented by recent standards of network television. Which isn’t to say that religion and God are never mentioned on TV, but that when they are, they are dismissed as irreconcilable, deeply personal things that don’t invite inspection beyond that of the effects they have on people’s behavior. They are approached as moral and cultural issues — never as metaphysical ones. And the idea that a large-ish portion of the American public might see people earnestly discussing the nature of infinity and causality, even if ineptly, only hours after Ugly Betty, fascinated me, despite my confidence that none of it would be illuminating, and that it was a ratings stunt.

I didn’t see the “distilled” version on Nightline, and the YouTube videos were removed before I could watch or save them, but I hear they did a pretty bad job with the material. At the moment, the entire debate is still available at the story’s ABC page, but, knowing that they probably won’t last, and with a tendency toward obsessive archivism and a disdain for ABC’s intractable flash player, I collected them myself. Altogether they’re about 97 minutes. If you’re short on time and have to be choosy, watch the “Mocking Darwin” segment, which contains the most lolz, and a guided, pictorial tour of an understanding of evolution so profoundly misinformed that even Lamarck is rolling his eyes. And he’s dead. As I watch this debate, I keep expecting Kirk to break character. Then I think, Ray must have some dangerously compromising photos of him.

From the Columbia Journalism Review:

We could go on, but why? Nightline felt no responsibility to take the issue seriously enough to include, say, a scientist or a theologian in the debate, so other than pointing out the dumbing down of the national conversation, we’ll just leave it at saying that we expect more of Nightline, and the American people deserve better than being forced to endure half-baked publicity stunts dressed up as news.

Thrown in at the end are some recent discussions Bill O’Reilly has had with Kirk Cameron and Richard Dawkins, in which Bill presents his own fucked version of an anthropic argument, expressing amazement that we could have “lucked out” by having such a habitable planet land on us, and plenty more frustratingly nebulous reasoning for your teeth-gnashing pleasure.

The videos were recorded using a years-old tool that I’ve wanted for as long as I can remember. CamStudio records the activity in a selected portion of your screen, and spits out an .avi. Its current version is from 2003, but, thanks to its open-sourceness, is still being developed. It gives you the option to use different recording codecs and to tweak their parameters, but the only way I was able to get results was with enormous files, approaching 1GB for 15 minutes of 320×240 video. Which is a pain in the ass, but it works.